The London years.

December 31, 2015

For the last day of the year, we headed off to the place that marked an important part of my youth, and may yet turn out to be part of my future too. Anouk has decided at the tender age of 12 that she wishes to follow in my footsteps to Jesus College, Cambridge. Frankly, even with all I now know about how much harder it is to get into Cambridge than it was when they somehow let me in 40 odd years ago (with a C in Mathematics A level....), I wouldn't bet against her.

She and I have toured the place before, but it was a first for Sylvie and Zelie, and Anouk was able to announce, upon seeing her mother's awed reaction to the centuries-old magic of a beautifully maintained Cambridge college: "Now you can see why I want this". It didn't hurt that we visited on a gorgeous, sunlit December day.

I was uncharacteristically lax in photo duties - so many memories to contend with - but here's a taste of our day: Syl and Anouk in college; Anouk failing to appreciate my directions outside the Round Church; Zelie much more interested in the Fitzbillies lunch menu afterwards. Nice place you've got there, Jesus....

November 02, 2015

For school half term we thought of heading for the beach, but they don't have beaches in Palmers Green, so we went to Blenheim Palace instead. It turned out to be a lovely day, although we weren't impressed with Laurence Weiner's conceptual art installations ( least of all the gaping eyesore on the building's facade - see below), but we trotted through the house at a rapid pace, had a nice lunch in Woodstock, and the park, of course, is as lovely as stately parks get in England. What with the punting afterwards (see previous post) we didn't miss the beach at all.

We made our entrance:

We didn't like the blue adornments:

But we did like the gardens (believe it or not):

We met Maman's twin:

And we liked the Autumn colours....

(Click on the pix for the full colour display, which for some reason is muted in this post)

October 27, 2015

It's always a blow, at my age, when you realise how different your life might have been if only you'd taken another path. It's happened to me twice in recent weeks, first when I discovered I should have become a professional cyclist (obviously), then yesterday, a ghost from a golden past floated down the river Cherwell.

With my daughters on half term, we bundled them off to Blenheim Palace, stopping in Oxford on the way home to do something I'd tried to organise several times in Cambridge, only to be foiled by the weather. I wanted to show them the sport that Oxbridge has rendered immortal. I wanted to take them punting.

The girls had no idea, of course, what punting was, and were most emphatically not interested in yet another of Papa's weird obsessions. They rolled their eyes when I told them what a privilege it would be for them to be taken out on a university river by one of the legends of the sport.

The latter would be me. I spent four years at Cambridge, two of them trying to avoid my philosophy studies. The best way not to study philosophy is to go punting instead, preferably down to the Green Man at Grantchester, although poling back after a couple of hours in the pub was often a lot more challenging than Descartes' theory of mind-body dualism.

Punting is like riding a bicycle. Get it right, and you won't fall over. Get it REALLY right, and beautiful women will fall at your feet (just look at the pictures below). High on my list of eternal regrets (quite a long list, I'm afraid), is that the International Olympic Committee has shamefully failed to include punting on its lists of approved competitions. I could have punted for my country, damn them.

Instead, I punted for my family. In the evening glow of early autumn, we boarded our flat-bottomed vessel at Magdalene Bridge and sped off into the gloaming.

"Have you ever punted before ?" asked a smirking Oxonian youth. "Oh yes," I replied. "Oh yes". There are some things you never forget.

September 21, 2015

It took a while to sort through more than 1,000 snaps from our summer holiday in France, but the book of the trip is now in the bag. Here's a few sample pages from the Allen-Mills family's latest 66-page photographic masterpiece. My thanks, as always, to the volunteers who posed so prettily for my camera (sometimes).

September 15, 2015

Daughter #4 came home from school the other day and asked if we could take her picture in the style of a 1750 painting by Thomas Gainsborough entitled Mr and Mrs Andrews. Readers of this blog will obviously know the picture in question, but just in case you've forgotten, the photo had to look something like this:

Well, it was obviously quite a challenge. For one thing, we don't own a gun. Nor does our back garden extend to the distant horizon (it extends to a nearby shed). And I haven't worn a tricorn hat for, oh, several weeks.

So we improvised a bit, and a walking stick and the dog's toy duck filled in for the shotgun. Zelie wore a table napkin on her head. And Sylvie tried to look manly.

I don't think we're going to win a prize for this one, but you can't say we didn't try.

September 13, 2015

I posted previously about our new nine-year-old, but I've only just caught up with the pix of the birthday party that followed. Yes, it was time for every nine-year-old daughter's dream: mini golf, bubbles and pizza.

These pics mostly speak for themselves, but as far as I can remember the six young ladies who helped #4 celebrate #9 were named Danielle, Danielle, Bob, Danielle, Other Danielle, and Danielle. Bringing up the rear on the golf course were daughters #s 1 and 3, and Delaney's boyfriend Ben, who heroically submitted himself to a day of torment surrounded by small females. Welcome to my life, Ben.

Anyway, here's the mini-golf, followed by the bubbles. I'll leave you to imagine the pizza.

And a couple of bubbles that didn't go pop (immediately):

I think the birthday girl had fun, although it was hard to tell from her poker face.....

September 07, 2015

My in-laws live in a big old barn in the Bresse region of France, famous for its free-range chickens. It should also be famous for its cooped-up Citroens. Dominique, Sylvie's father, used to be an avid restorer of vintage 2CVs and various parts of the barn were once filled with cannibalised carcasses and heaps of spare parts (see part of the collection below). Then Dominique turned to LandRovers, and his wife, Marie, finally decided that the time had come to sell off the Citroen hoard. Including the one stashed away in the attic.

It proved quite an operation to get the last body down from the rafters. Passing through on our way home from Provence last month, we were roped in (literally) to the hoisting party. That's me up there looking deeply worried as Dominique and grandson Remy manoevre the 2CV skeleton into place while other grandson Romain works the hoist.

The hard part was edging the body off the ledge without it plummeting to the ground. Happily, our high-tech expertise accomplished the task. If any of you need to get a car out of your attic, just give me a call.

September 06, 2015

Continuing those family re-introductions, here is daughter #4 (and last), a birthday girl only a couple of days ago. Z remains tragically prone to the funny-face, tongue-sticking-out follies that her sisters have mercifully grown out of, but every now and then, I catch her unawares and it turns out that she can be quite normal. Who knew ?

September 02, 2015

Daughters numbers 1 and 2 now being all grown up and resident across the Atlantic, it has fallen to daughter #3 to carry the main burden of paternal photographic attention (daughter #4 is still in the sticking out tongue phase, to be addressed in due course). Now aged 12, Number Three has arrived at that magical moment when the goofiness of her youth is giving way to the first glimpses of adult beauty. Sometimes she takes my breath away. She can still be pretty goofy when she wants, though.